In today’s Republican Party, it’s the rule more than the exception for a party leader (or what passes for one in today’s Republican Party) to make totally false public statements. This is true not just when appearing on TV, or speaking to reporters, but also when making speeches on the floor of the House or Senate.

So it really wasn’t too surprising when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor to pitch the outrageously false proposition that the Wall Street reform bill is designed to facilitate rather than prevent future bank bailouts. He was just doing his job, pretty much, by propagating that big fat lie:

“We cannot allow endless taxpayer funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the floor this morning. “That’s why we must not pass the financial reform bill that’s about to hit the floor. The fact is this bill wouldn’t solve the problems that led to the financial crisis. It would make them worse.”

McConnell said the bill in question, authored by Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, would “not only allow for taxpayer funded bailouts for Wall Street banks. It institutionalizes them.”

It didn’t exactly escape attention that McConnell was just reciting from a script, the one written for Republicans by their favorite public-speaking ghostwriter, Republican pollster, strategist and rhetoric guru Frank Luntz:

…for those who followed the financial regulatory reform fight from its earliest days last year, these words might ring a bell. They come, almost verbatim, from a strategy memo authored by Republican strategist Frank Luntz.

“[A] vote in favor of creating a permanent bailout fund of private companies is like committing political hari-kari,” wrote Luntz early this year. “Frankly, the single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout.”

McConnell isn’t the only Republican to push this line. In fact, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)–the GOP’s top regulatory reform negotiator–penned a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warning that the Dodd bill would make future bailouts ever more likely.

(For a more detailed, textual analysis of McConnell’s indebtedness to Luntz, see this.)

Dodd, naturally enough, was incensed by McConnell’s lies, since he was effectively implying that Dodd is a charlatan:

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Ct., delivered a blistering 20-minute speech that included the revelation of a political talking points memo from a Republican strategist that was virtually verbatim to the criticism voiced Tuesday by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

McConnell had accused Dodd of drafting partisan legislation, even though the Banking Committee chairman has worked for roughly half a year with key Senate Republicans and incorporated many of their ideas into his bill. McConnell also said the bill continues controversial bank bailouts, which it does not.

“It’s a naked political strategy,” thundered a visibly upset Dodd. He held up a leaked memo attributed to GOP strategist Frank Luntz that advises Republican lawmakers to accuse Dodd and other Democrats of perpetuating bailouts for giant banks.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. The bill as drafted ends bailouts,” Dodd said, describing how regulators would get new powers to dissolve large financial institutions, even healthy ones if their size is deemed to threaten the broader financial system.

Sen. Mark Warner, who played a key role in crafting the bill, also struck back, accusing McConnell of being stupid or deliberately dense:

…in an interview in his office this morning, Warner was not too happy with McConnell’s characterization of their work. “It appears that the Republican leader either doesn’t understand or chooses not to understand the basic underlying premise of what this bill puts in place.”

For the Senate, this is all pretty strong stuff. Warner called out McConnell in no uncertain terms. Dodd all but branded McConnell a liar, and from the Senate floor, too.

Meanwhile, McConnell’s over-the-top misrepresentations are not playing too well even with Republicans:

Even Republicans were reluctant to rally behind McConnell’s absurdities. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) characterized the new argument as “a touch over the top.” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) compared McConnell’s pitch to “death panel” rhetoric. The Maine moderates — Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — pretended not to know what McConnell had said so they wouldn’t have to defend it.

And even the media doesn’t seem to be willing to look the other way. John Harwood (of CNBC)said on MSNBC that McConnell’s claim is “a little silly when you look at the text of the bill.” And CNN‘s Dana Bash was rude enough to ask McConnell this question:

How do you push back against this perception that you’re doing the bidding of the large banks? There was a report that you guys met with hedge fund managers in New York. A lot of people are viewing this particular line of argument, this bailout argument as spin —

For the record, since the question was “How do you push back”, McConnell’s answer amounted to: very ineffectually.